GTASC (The Great True Achievement Score Challenge) for those unfamiliar with it, is a contest graciously hosted by
planting42 every year. It's gained popularity since it started being hosted on the True Achievements site last year instead of an outside site. The contest works as follows: At midnight GMT on Sunday (about 7 or 8PM EST on Saturday) the contest period is started. Your TA score for the achievements that you and your team unlock during that week are tracked and you're placed on a leaderboard to see where you stand against other competing teams. At the end of the period, a certain number of teams with the lowest score are eliminated from the competition. After the period resets, you go back to zero and do it again. Well, kind of.
The beauty of this competition is that it tracks TA score, which fluctuates, and not GamerScore, which is static. If you plow through a brand new release with inflated TA this week, you may find yourself with negative TA next week and you'll have to dig yourself out of a hole. That often means being patient when it comes to new releases or at least having a plan in place to make up that lost ground when the TA stabilizes. Because of this, there is a certain element of strategy and planning to this contest. It also means that unless you have a large backlog or the resources to acquire many games, you don't want to put up a huge score every week and exhaust your game supply. Granted, GamerScore isn't at a shortage with all the ID@Xbox games popping up each week, but some gamers are on a tight budget and can't afford to pick up a few games a month. It's for these reasons that I look forward to the GTASC every year. This year is a disappointing one so far because of certain rules and changes. First, I'll give my opinion on some of the more positive changes.
This year went to 3 members per team instead of 4. I actually thought that was a good idea. With 4 people on a team, it leaves room for one member to be dead weight and the other 3 team members to drag them along. It's really annoying to have to cover someone and have to make up for their shortcomings. It basically just draws out the time before elimination inevitably hits. With only 3 members, it's much harder to cover for dead weight, so it encourages team members to work together more. Along with that change came a new addition to this year's contest: an individual contest. This allowed those who didn't have/didn't want a team to still compete. Maybe some people couldn't commit the time necessary to be a reliable team member, so they wanted to go solo. Kudos to them. I think the individual contest was a brilliant idea. That brilliant idea made random team generation one of the poorer choices for this year's competition.
Last year, as with the previous year, you had to build your team. If you couldn't scrounge up enough people to fill a team, sorry fellas, you were out of luck. This year, you could just sign up all willy nilly and use the magic of a random generator to find yourself some teammates. This meant that people had to exert no effort at all to get on a team. This led to people who didn't really care or who don't really play much signing up for this competition. I saw teams drop out in the first week because one member of the team didn't play a single thing all week. That's disappointing. Along those lines, you also needed a "HEFTY" 20,000 GamerScore to sign up for the competition, meaning you didn't have to be playing Xbox for long. On November 22 of this year, Xbox 360 and the achievements that came with the introduction of it will be 10 years old. Xbox One and the low hanging fruit it provides has been around for over a year. Realistically, you can get 20k GS in a month, if you hit those easy games hard. You can hit it in a year if you play normally and throw in a few easy games. Even the achievement hunters that have a busy life, a job or two, outside hobbies, families, or all of the above usually hit about 35k GS a year. Why was the GS minimum so low this year? Because it was important to pander to the lowest common denominator.
The release of the TA app caused a huge influx of new members before the GTASC went live. Because we wanted everyone to feel included, there was a low minimum requirement set so that everyone could play. To me, that's like the nonsense that they do with sports teams for children now. Everybody who plays gets a trophy, because we can't have anyone left out. Why teach them that you can't always win and to learn to not be a poor loser? Nah, let's start to foster that sense of entitlement instead.
The same thing happened with GTASC. Of course it's awesome to have new people join TA. The more people the better! However, why penalize those that have been around for a while just to make the n00bs feel special? I will mention that last year's minimum score requirement was 10K GS, but you also had to have your TA account active for a minimum of 6 months and you had to find your own team. 50K GS isn't a high GS, but it would certainly have eliminated a lot of the super casual players that are bogging this contest down and making some randomly generated teams struggle. I'm not just talking out of my posterior side here; let me throw some nerdiness at you to prove my point. I'm pulling this info from
planting42's Blog and
GTASC 15 Team, if you're wondering. Since last year's teams had 4 members instead of 3, the total team scores will be naturally higher than this year, so I will break them down into a score per person to level the playing field.
In the first period of GTASC 2014, the team with the lowest score that was above the elimination line, thus making it to the next period, had 3,514TA, which averages out to 878.5TA per person. I should note here that he first few weeks of GTASC are normally pretty high scoring, as people come out of the gates with something to prove. This year, GTASC 2015, the lowest scoring team to continue on had 1,295TA, or 431.66TA per person. That's a 446.84TA difference per person. Let's hop to period 4.
In 2014, the number to continue on was 3,641TA, or 910.25TA per person. In 2015, it was 1,354TA, or 451.33TA per person. A difference of 458.92TA. As I have been typing, period 8 of this year has just concluded. In 2014, we saw the lowest team march forward with 4,343TA, or 1,085.75 TA per person. In 2015, 1,297TA, or 432.33TA per person, was the abhorrently low bar set for the period. That's a difference of 653.42 per person between the two years. For a contest with "challenge" in the name, it sure seems to be lacking.
Personally, I use the GTASC to keep me motivated and to make sure I am constantly working toward new Gamer Goals. I love the challenge it usually presents and the feeling of making it another week normally brings a sense of accomplishment. I'm missing that feeling this year. Honestly, I think that the random team generation, especially paired with the low GS requirement, was the downfall of this year's competition. When you look at the teams that get eliminated each week, it's mostly randomly generated teams. (You can tell which teams were randomly generated by the team name. Instead of having a real name, they have a name like "Team XYZ," where XYZ will be the Gamertag of the randomly assigned team leader.) To me, that shows a flaw in the system. If teams are going to be randomly generated, the minimum GamerScore requirement needs to be bumped up. If it's going to be be a low score requirement like 20K, random generation needs to stop. Since the individual contest exists, players still have a viable option to compete at their own pace without having a direct impact on other people.
With the annoying Xbox Live issues, lackluster showing of the first part of the GTASC, and picking up a second job that has my total working hours at a bare minimum of 50 on a light week and 65 on the heavy side, I haven't been playing much because I really haven't had to. I pop my one cheevo a day and that's about it. I'm rather calculating and strategic when it comes to GTASC, so I don't use points when it's not necessary. We have one team member who can basically carry us through each week without anyone else playing at all because the scores are so low. I'm really hoping the XBL issues get fixed and the GTASC teams start to pick up the pace soon so that my achievement itch can start being scratched again soon.
Oh, and as an off topic random suggestion for future contests, I think it would be awesome if there was an option for teams to donate money as an entry fee, of sorts. Maybe $1 per team member or something like that to go toward a prize pool. That way, some awesome prizes of higher value could be had or there could be prizes for random winners selected from those who complete bonus objectives. Only teams who donate would be eligible for those particular prizes, so the donation wouldn't be required for those who didn't wish to.
That's just my whole two cents on the matter. Before I go, let me reiterate the fact that I love the concept of GTASC and truly appreciate the labor of love that is to run and host the contest. If you haven't participated in it before, check out the details of it and think about participating in it next year. (Preferably the individual contest if you only pick up the controller every now and then.
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If you've made it this far through this long spiel, you're a trooper. I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog. Let me know your opinion on the matter in the comments below.
Until next time, stay frosty and game on!